Odd because I wasn’t shocked to see what was happening. Nor was I shocked to see the ‘lack of’ from the powers that be.

A deep rooted inability to acknowledge, accept or deal with the fact that guilt for their own greedy, selfish and scarcity driven behaviour that has been steadily building since the first yuppie donned that wax jacket and brick phone!

Then it got me thinking…

I left school at 16, i left with mixed grades but 9 GCSE’s only one at C or above. I found school; for the majority of time, a total waste. I was talked at for 15 years and it felt like a coma.

I awoke the day i started full time employment, the day i started my journey of becoming a man. Yet from a very young age i had a simple and defined dream, to become a Police Officer.

It wasn’t a crush or a whim; it was a life-long dream that developed into a goal as i grew. From a small village with a local bobby to a big city with Police vans, sirens and the mild hum of a police helicopter. I now wanted to join the Police more than ever, with a directional choice of Investigation….even of corrupt police…maybe that hindered my application! Maybe the fact that i was a white male, with legs that worked and i liked members of the opposite sex hindered my application.

One thing for absolute surety was this…if i wanted to achieve anything i needed to apply myself.

At school, in the future at work and in business.

So school began with a concerted effort to look for mentors who could help, at that age they were grown-ups who i could talk to and would listen, support and more importantly ask me questions to get me thinking.

The same then at work, I applied myself and looked to improve my experience, skills and knowledge. One step closer to becoming a Police Officer, one step closer to the dream.

Warehousing, production, despatch, manufacturing, insurance, marketing, logistics, service industry, hospitality and a couple of applications to the police later i found myself at the final interview stage…to be told…”You’re too shy”

Really?…please challenge my academic ability by all means, but shy…the man who challenged the school system and won, the man who took a factory job into right hand man for production, implementing ideas that 30, 40 and 50 year old men followed…I was 18! Shy…really?

OK, breathe…apply yourself.

I scouted, found, applied, got accepted and become the youngest badged prisoner custody officer in the UK. I was 21. One step closer to the dream.

At this point, my dream began to fall apart. Little did I know at the time but it was becoming a distant memory…for I was building a new life, one I was far better suited for. One, some may argue I was put here for.

I found myself yet again challenging the status quo, challenging what it was we were doing if I could see or felt from others that there may be a better way. Three months in I put some ideas forward for the training of Field Officers and Custody Officers. To my surprise they went for it. Soon I was putting together and delivering the training course that initially took 6 weeks in just 3 weeks. It started completely in the classroom, by the time I finished you were doing the job during the training using live role-plays and many other techniques to help the varying learning styles in the room, compile and compute technical, practical and theoretical information for later use.

Then the realisation began to hit me…it wasn’t what I did or what I do…it is who I am… ‘I am a coach’